Musings on Food and Life

On the Farm

November 11, 2009

Consider Bardwell Farm located in West Pawlet, Vermont just over the border from Washington County, N.Y. has generated a reputation for making world class cheeses from both goat and cow milks. I recently had the chance to visit the farm and at the same time observe both the making of cheese and the making of a quality video as Michael Crupain of The Dairy Show was there to film the process.

The picturesque and bucolic farm is owned by Angela Miller, Russell Glover and Chris Gray. The engaging Peter Dixon, formerly cheese maker at The Vermont Butter and Cheese Company is the head cheese maker at Consider Bardwell.

The cheese are made from milk the farm's own Oberhasli goats and from the nearby Jersey Girls Farm. Dixon makes a a number of different cheeses, but his favorites are the firmer, aged cheeses, like the cow's milk Rupert he was making in the photos above. To make these harder cheeses, it is important to cut the curds into extremely small pieces to get out as much liquid whey as possible. Softer cheeses are made from larger curds. Dixon is fastidious in his cheese making, making sure that all the little details are right and that his cheeses are consistent from batch to batch, or at least as consistent as an essentially natural product can be. His attention to details like the pH of the whey/curd combination shows through in the fine quality of the finished product as does the quality of the base milks.

Stay tuned to The Dairy Show for more on the process and the farm including what is sure to be another outstanding video.

September 17, 2009

Washington County (N.Y.) has developed into a truly significant cheese making destination. Always a dairy stronghold, over the past ten years it has blossomed into a high quality cheese center. If any one had any doubts, this past weekend's Washington County Cheese Tour would have dispelled them.

Liza Porter cutting samples of cheese

The tour covered five cheese makers spread with-in a relatively short radius. I started my circuit at Longview Farm in the Town of Argyle. Run by Liza and David Porter, this farm overlooks the Hudson River Valley with incredible views. They make both cow's and goat's milk cheeses of excellent quality. Their chevre, creme fraiche and feta are staples in my house, while their hard cow's milk cheeses are superb as well. Hi Rock, a gruyere-like cheese is a particular favorite and would make an awesome grilled cheese or macaroni and cheese. Producing cheese since 2004, their quality has steadily improved and is now as good as any.

Dave Randles talking cheese

From Longview and their French Alpine goats, I drove on to The Argyle Cheese Farmer. Marge and Dave Randles' cheeses and dairy products, made with cow's milk, are very good. I especially like their cheese curds, but their most notable product for me is their yogurt, in particular their Greek style yogurt, which is what I think the Greek makers of Fage Total Yogurt were looking for when they built their plant in nearby Johnstown, N.Y.

Sweet Springs Farm is located on an historic homestead in Argyle that takes a long drive down a narrow dirt road to get to. Jeff Bowers' Nubian goats and cheese making facility make a worthwhile destination. Bowers' chevres and his wonderful, rinded, White Lily are outstanding cheeses. White Lily, named after one of the farms first goats, is one of my favorite cheeses - period. Like Longview and 3-Corner Field Farm, Sweet Springs is making a blue cheese as well. Unlike the others, Sweet Springs is a blue-rinded cheese. The others are blue veined.

On my way to 3-Corner Field Farm, I stopped at Sheldon Farms to pick up some corn and had a terrific chorizo quesadilla for lunch. After relaxing a bit and tasting the cheeses of Warren County's Nettle Meadow Farm (I love Kunik) available for tasting at the store, I continued to the farm, where I found the biggest crowds of the day. I have been a fan of this farm for quite some time. They started by raising excellent lamb and over time Karen Weinberg, her husband Paul Borghard and their daughters turned into world class cheese makers as well. I am particularly fond of their Shushan Snow. Their sheep's milk yogurt and ricottas are awesome as well. In addition to great product, 3-Corner Field Farm is amazingly picturesque with rolling hills and frisky sheep working on producing next spring's lambs.

Technically a ringer on this tour, since the farm is actually located just across the border from Washington County in West Pawlet, Vermont, Consider Bardwell Farm was my last stop of the day. Producers of both cow's and goat's milk cheeses, they are perhaps most well known for their semi-soft and hard cheeses such as Dorset and Manchester, Consider Bardwell Farm's cheeses are probably the most widely available of the cheeses from the tour. They can be found in a number of high end cheese shops as well as top restaurants around the northeast including Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

While these comprise some of the most well known cheese makers of the area, this list is not exhaustive as the county is the home of other fledgling enterprises as well as some more established ones. One cheese making farm notable by its absence from this group is Dancing Ewe Farm in Granville, N.Y. They are particularly well known for their Italian style sheep's milk cheeses, with their ricotta having achieved prominence and featured in Mario Batali's Babbo.

The work is hard, but appears to be paying off for these cheese makers as well as the region. While many of the farms' visitors were local, it appeared that at least as many had traveled to the area specifically for this event. I, for one, will continue to watch the further development of Washington County's growing cheese making tradition with a growl in my stomach.

September 16, 2009

September 14, 2009

Nestled in the hills of Washington County, N.Y., just outside the Village of Argyle, Mack Brook Farm raises grass-fed mostly Angus cattle on approximately 300 or so acres of land with a herd of about 50 at this time. The farm has been family owned since the 1920's, but until 2003 was primarily a dairy farm. Since that time Kevin Jablonski and Karen Christensen have been building a herd and a reputation for finely marbled and delicious grassfed beef - yes, I said, finely marbled grass-fed beef. The cattle feed on natural grass in the warmer months and "bailage" or bailed hay from their farm in the cooler months, a process that Jablonski says results in the marbling. Over time, it has not just been the size of the herd that has grown, but also the size of the individuals within the herd, with their average animal topping out at over 900 pounds dressed weight.

I toured the farm the other day with Kevin Jablonski. Our first stop was to visit the cows, their calves and the breeding bull. While the stock is not entirely Angus (it is mostly so), it does contain a bull who is a descendant of the original Scottish Angus breed. The recently acquired bull was brought in to return the stock to prime grass-eating characteristics. In the United States, corn-fed beef has been bred to be tall and narrow, easier to fit into feed lots and confinement. Traditionally, cattle best suited for their natural grass diets have tended to be shorter and squatter. Mack Brook cattle are nothing if not short and stout! While it can be tempting to think all cattle are alike, this is clearly not the case. In addition to the physical differences between cattle bred to eat corn and those more suited for grass, there is a big difference between cattle bred for meat vs. those bred for dairy purposes. Beef cattle tend to be larger, incorporating their feed into muscle mass and fat rather than pouring their calories into milk production.

From the cows and calves and an overprotective mother, we proceeded to another lush field to visit the heifers (females who have not yet bred) and steers (castrated males - they are castrated by banding their scrotum beneath their testicles at birth, preventing their development). These animals tended to be a bit more skittish, but ultimately proved very curious, slowly gravitating towards us as we stood still in the field. The animals are beautiful with full, shiny coats and powerful muscles evident underneath.

While Jablonski and Christensen have not pursued an organic designation secondary to the expense associated with obtaining it, the animals are raised in an organic fashion. Jablonski and Christensen do not use pesticides, herbicides or non-organic fertilizers on their land nor do they administer antibiotics or hormones to their animals. They do, however, vaccinate their cattle, something that Jablonski said, was enough to turn off one dogmatic potential meat purchaser. The irony is that vaccinating the cattle is safer for them and everyone else without adversely effecting the quality of the meat or indicating any lapses in how the animals are raised. Taking offense to vaccination simply doesn't make sense from either a scientific or humanistic perspective.

The cattle of Mack Brook Farm are extremely well taken care of. One certification Jablonski and Christensen did go through the trouble and expense of obtaining is that of being Certified Humane. This process not only looks at the conditions on the farm, but where and how the animals are slaughtered. Jablonski explained that they bring their animals to slaughter at a slaughterhouse literally five miles from the farm, an important step that Jablonski feels makes a big difference in the ultimate quality of the meat, since stress of travel, which he says has a direct effect on meat quality by reducing the marbling, is kept to a minimum.

When I asked Jablonski if the animals ever stayed in a barn, he told me that they always remain outdoors on the land and seem to be quite happy for it. Unfazed by the winter cold, the animals are free to take shelter from the wind and the elements in surrounding woods. By not staying in a confined barn, they have a much greater tendency to avoid illness and remain healthy.

Mack Brook beef is not a supermarket product. To get this meat, one has to invest a little effort in addition to a little money. Mack Brook meat is not sold in supermarkets nor do they have a direct presence at Farmers markets. For the time being, they neither ship nor take credit cards. To get this beef, one must either go to the farm, buy it from select stores (Sheldon's Market, Salem Garden Works, Green Pea Local (in Greenwich),
Four Seasons (Saratoga), Wild Thyme (Ballston Spa) and The Green Grocer
(Clifton Park)) or get it through John Ubaldo's Mountain View Farm, (who brings it to Farmers Markets in Westchester), order it from a CSA through Leweis-Waite farm or get it in NYC through The Farm-to-Chef Express. One well-known NYC restaurant that has taken the trouble to use Mack Brook beef is Gramercy Tavern.

Growing slowly, Christensen and Jablonski are happy with the pace of their business. While there is room for further growth both in terms of what their land can sustain and what they can personally manage, they are afraid of expanding too rapidly. They would rather sacrifice some potential sales in the short term, to make sure that they are able to provide a quality sustainable product for the long term.

August 03, 2009

By virtue of a winning silent auction bid at last week's Salem Courthouse Al Fresco Dinner, my wife and I possessed one delicious raspberry pie and a gift certificate for ten pounds of self-pick blueberries - both from Gardenworks, a farm and farm stand located in Eastern Washington County in the Town of Hebron. With a day off after a decent night on call in the hospital and sunshine to boot, my wife and I headed on over to the farm earlier this week. The drive is a sportscar's dream with plenty of rolling, curvy country roads and beautiful scenery. The farm itself is set amongst rolling hills and is the picture of pastoral beauty. The stand is loaded with beautiful flowers, both fresh and dried as well as a fine array of fruits, vegetables, meats and cheeses. My wife and I picked up our belts and buckets and made our way up to the extensive and loaded blueberry bushes on the hill across the road from the stand. There is another extensive stand of bushes behind the farm stand, but we had no need to explore there as we were able to quickly load up on our allotment and more, all while feasting on some of the best, fattest and most luscious blueberries around. Raspberries are also available for picking, but we are assured that they will be at their best later in the season. A return visit may very well be in order.

July 29, 2009

In an article written for San Francisco Magazine, Chef/Author Daniel Patterson laments that "The corn that we eat in its natural state has lost its distinctive
flavor, echoing America’s drift toward sweet, one-dimensional tastes." He continues to say, "The corn I remember from my youth was markedly different from what’s grown today." Patterson attributes this to farmers growing corn for a market that only seems to value sweetness, leaving the product one dimensional. The rise of "supersweet" hybrids and the decline of open pollination appear to be the principle reasons for the apparent unidimensionality of corn flavor. According to Patricia Sheldon of Sheldon Farms in Washington County, the reason that the supersweet hybrids were developed was to maintain the sweetness of industrial farm grown corn from places like Florida as the corn was transported and distributed elsewhere in the country. Many farms, including ones just selling locally took to those hybrids thinking that if sweet corn is good, "supersweet" must be even better. In addition to the lack of depth of corn flavor, according to Sheldon, the "supersweet" hybrids tend to have a mealy texture, owing to the high sugar content. She states, that though they use hybrids and no longer open pollinate at Sheldon Farms, they do not use "supersweet" varieties. Instead they use a number of different hybrids, which I will attest, still provide great corn flavor and crisp texture in addition to some requisite sweetness.

The photo of the field above is of field corn, grown to feed animals. In addition to being less sweet that corn grown for human consumption in the U.S., it is grown later in the season, is hardier, taller and designed for the entire plant to be harvested and used for feed. Of course, corn as animal feed has its own issues, but I will not get in to them here.

It is too bad that the state of sweet corn in the nation has generally come to this. Patterson has decided that since he cannot find the corn of his youth, he will not use it.

"Over the years, I’ve made corn-juice glazes, corn meringues, sautés
of corn and chanterelles, corn-and-basil salads, and corn-and-tomato
combinations of all kinds, but nothing has ever thrilled me the way
steamed and buttered corn on the cob did in my childhood. Corn today is
so sweet that it overpowers or undermines everything it accompanies,
while lacking one key component: corn flavor.

This year, I’m throwing in the towel: No more corn on the menu. I’m
tired of trying to create a balanced dish with an ingredient that
tastes like it’s been impregnated with simple syrup. And I’m disgusted
that the industrial seed companies bet—correctly, as it turns out—on
Americans’ appetite for sweet, monolithic flavors with no subtlety, in
the process ruining an extraordinary vegetable. "

While I share Patterson's observation and general lament, i am happy that I am still able to find at least some corn here in N.Y. state that still has depth of flavor and the texture that I have always associated with corn. Summer is still a time where I and others can still look forward to fresh, loal, in-season corn with character.

July 21, 2009

I returned to John Boy's Mountain Farm this past weekend to pick up some more andouille and a little tasso for the jambalaya I was making. It so happened that John Ubaldo had just finished smoking some hog belly in his smoker. After seeing these beautiful bellies, of course, I had to pick up some bacon too!

July 14, 2009

Tucked away on a hillside deep into Washington County, N.Y., in the Town of Jackson, not far from Vermont, sits a small farm with Berkshires and birds. John Ubaldo and his wife Laura relocated here a bit over one year ago from downstate N.Y. primarily to raise the Berkshire breed of pigs, a heritage breed, renowned for the flavor of their meat as well as their flocks of chickens, ducks and geese. For some background on the Ubaldos and their products see here and here. They sell their product at Farmers markets in Westchester, N.Y., through Washington County's Farm to Chef Express or directly from the farm. At the moment, they do not have a website.

I paid a visit to the farm yesterday to pick up some spare ribs and had a chance to visit with the Ubaldos and their livestock. I also left having purchased a few items beyond the ribs that I drove there to pick up, including goose, duck and chicken eggs, andouille, Canadian bacon, smoked duck breasts, smoked quail and smoked trout.

After we finished conducting business, the Ubaldo's brought me down to visit with their prized Berkshire pigs. Our first stop was to see the pigs out in the field, especially John's favorite boar, who he affectionately, albeit inappropriately at this time, calls "Grandpa." Grandpa is a large, still young, very friendly boar, who got up out of his late afternoon revery to come and pay us a visit. He very much seemed to enjoy John's caresses and scratches. The other pigs looking on from surrounding fields appeared to be a wee bit envious as many ambled over to see what was going on.

John Ubaldo with "Grandpa"

While standing there, I noticed that the air did not smell of flowers. On the same token, neither was it a profound stench. I could certainly discern that this was a farm, but it was not significantly odoriferous or particularly unpleasant. It was clear that these pigs, even though most are destined for a slaughterhouse and a plate, are extremely well cared for.

We moseyed on to visit other pens. The Ubaldo's have a rotation set up for certain pigs as they ready for market. Though the pigs have the fields and even woods to roam around in for most of their lives, as they close in towards the end, their feed becomes more circumscribed. It is not for nothing that these pigs attain the size they do. Unlike most pig farmers in the U.S., the Ubaldos do not slaughter their pigs until they reach a minimum weight of 400 pounds and at least one year of age. Even though he breeds the pigs, Ubaldo does not sell any piglets for slaughter. His preference is for the classic, deep red, highly marbled meat of the adult Berkshire.

To emphasize the last point he and Laura brought me to see their most recent litters of piglets, including a litter of rare English bloodline Berklshires less than 24 hours old. The other litters of adorable piglets were 3 and 6 weeks old respectively. Unfortunately, the breed has a reputation for poor mothering and the mother of the 3 week-old litter had to be separated from them as her milk had run dry and she was more likely to inadvertently hurt or kill them than to nurture them. While the mother may have suffered somewhat from the separation, the piglets appeared not to have as they were active and extremely playful. The newborn piglets and the 6 week-olds were still penned in with their mother, though the newborns were in a pen designed to allow them access to their mother without her being able to inadvertently crush them.

Newborn under the warming lights

Piglet less than 24hrs old

Unfortunately the afternoon had shifted into evening and I had to get on. On my way off the property, I stopped to visit with the birds. With plenty of free-range including a pond and meticulously clean barns, these appeared to be very well-taken care of birds too. Interestingly, John Ubaldo told me that he does not have a significant problem with predators since all the birds are housed at night. During the day, he does lose an occasional bird to a roaming hawk or a smart snapping turtle.

For more photos of this superb farm, please see here or the slideshow below.

June 25, 2009

Jenn Small with some of her heritage breed Tamworth pigs at Flying Pigs Farm in Shushan, N.Y. during the summer of 2003. Flying Pigs farm's heritage pork has since become a staple at the Union Square and other NYC greenmarkets as well as NYC and local restaurants - great stuff!

June 24, 2009

Done once or twice a week, today at The Garden of Spices it was the time for the processing of live poultry, a process done at the farm for their own birds as well as those from other area farms. This is reality. As an omnivore, I do not shy away from the necessities that bring meat to my table. I do my best, however, to assure that it comes from farms where the animals are raised humanely and abattoirs where they are slaughtered as humanely and cleanly as possible. The Garden of Spices, a true small family farm, fits on both counts.

Please do not read the rest of this post if you are not prepared to see graphic images of a poultry slaughterhouse.

June 23, 2009

I went to pick up some fresh chickens today to cook for visiting relatives tomorrow. The farm, called The Garden of Spices, is one of the area's premiere poultry farms and one of the few that has its own abattoir. Located in Greenwich, N.Y. they handle slaughtering duties not only for themselves, but also for most of the area farms that raise poultry. They raise their birds free-range in movable coops. Along with chickens they also raise and sell duck and guinea fowl. The birds feed on everything that these poultry normally feed on in a free-range situation. Their slaughtering process is done once or twice a week, today being that day. On this post I will simply show the birds on the farm. In the subsequent post, I will show photos of the slaughter process. The photos are graphic and may be unsettling to some. I do, however, feel that it is important to understand where food comes from and how it gets to our table. I have no problem eating meat from animals that are raised and slaughtered humanely. Unfortunately, witnessing the slaughter is never easy, but the process is real and a necessary one if one is going to have meat to eat. The process at The Garden of Spices is a clean and efficient one, which is attested to by the superior product that comes from there, whether the birds have been raised there or at other farms. Amongst their customers are a number of restaurants in the NY metropolitan area.

Ducks and ducklings on the pond

Ducklings

Recently hatched chick

Wandering rooster and duck

Chicks in the movable coop

Señor Rooster

Movable coop

Ducks and guinea hens in a movable coop

Flying guinea fowl

Canned chicken

To come: the next post will portray the slaughtering process. Warning: it will be quite graphic. Please do not look at it if you are easily upset or prefer not to know how meat gets to one's plate.